Realistic Expectations
by himitsutsubasa
Summary: Nothing is what it seems. Meiko hates alcohol. Luka is a hippie. Len is a cold bastard. Rin is too nice for her own good. Miku is street smart. And Kaito is his own idiotic self. Great expections? I have realistic ones.


For Lafiel Nightray

* * *

Miku held up a green leek plushie. Really, Luka was going overboard. She stared at the Caribbean turquoise walls and the white, four-poster bed. There was glitter mixed into the paint so in the evening light it shimmered.

"I asked you to make it girly. Not your room," she muttered to herself.

Miku wondered if Luka really wanted to go into interior design. The two days she left Luka to her devices the room was complete. But it looked too "Hatsune Miku". Not the real her. The stage her. The ditzy flake that sang happy-go-lucky songs.

She tore the leek in half. Why was KEI so insistent that no one see the real them?

Rin was a sweetie. She couldn't hurt a fly, even if it was carrying million of disease causing bacteria. She would try to disinfect it. Len was completely insensitive. He did what he wanted when he wanted. If you asked him a question, you could expect either sarcasm or a dose of obvious. His signature was a dose of both.

Luka was a relaxed, bohemian woman. There wasn't a stressed bone in her body. And, she didn't like tuna. She was a vegetarian.

Meiko was no drunk. She stuck strictly to water and asked everyone to do the same. Alcohol killed brain cells, she said.

The only person who was anything like his fan portrayals was Kaito. He was the ice-cream-loving idiot.

"Dinner!" Thank heavens it was Rin and Len's turn to cook. The blonde couple always found away to make a delicious and healthy meal.

"What are we having today?" Meiko sat at the island in the middle of the kitchen. She was drinking out of her never-ending Evian water bottle.

"What do you see?" Len was absorbed in his book, A Tale of Two Cities. He called it light literature. It wasn't a surprise he was a grade ahead of his age.

Rin emerged from the refrigerator. "Len, don't speak so. It was only a question." She pulled out a pitcher of her special lemonade. It was something like the two of them. Sweet and tart, Rin and Len.

"We have a light Greek salad. I added extra feta for you. There is angel hair pasta with Len's meatballs and marinara sauce. And for dessert, we made panna cotta topped with fresh seasonal fruits. This time we used cherries and peaches." Rin placed the pitcher on the table and checked the setting. Kei wasn't going to have dinner with us tonight.

"Rin, this looks great." Miku pulled out a chair. Luka chose just then to breeze in a flutter of cotton. Her free flowing dresses were getting more loose and billowy every day.

"This looks lovely. But, I don't…" Rin gestured to the plate she already prepared.

"No meat?" Len asked.

"You are a dear," Luka pinched Rin's cheek and sat down. Everyone took their places.

"Let's say grace," Meiko sat at the head of the table that day.

We all stuck to her strangely catholic tradition. No one had noticed it wasn't Japanese until Kei spazzed about it. That was when he first joined them for dinner.

"Amen." Miku munched on her salad. It was more croutons than lettuce, but she liked it that way. Kaito was supposed to have gotten home in time for dinner. They guessed he was redoing some recordings since that seemed to be his down fall recently. He had a harder time going over the more difficult raps.

"So, how was your day?" Rin recounted another day of writing for environmentalist columns. No one knew she did that. It was a secret. Len had been in the home library brushing up on his French. Luka had a music video that had wrapped early. Gakupo wasn't as much of an idiot as they thought.

Another one who wears a mask, Miku thought bitterly. She hadn't wanted this. When she signed up for the vocaloid unit, they told her she was going to be herself. She was going to sing her lungs out and be happy. That was the dream. Somehow, it changed. The spunky, street tough girl was dead and buried.

Not really. She dug into the pasta. She still had some control. Maiko saw the look in her eye.

"Tabasco?" Miku nodded. Luka smiled serenely and dumped half a bottle on Miku's plate.

"Thank you." She still had some way to fight back.

Luka started discussing how Gakupo was actually really smooth. He wasn't an idiot like GGRKS portrayed him to be. Just like how she wasn't a tsundere. They got into a deep debate over how they careers would have fared otherwise when Kaito got home.

"I have ice cream!" he had a huge plastic bag filled with god-knows what brand. Last time, he brought home some obscure Italian gelato that tasted very nice but dented his wallet badly. Miku peeked around the others to see the familiar colors of hagen-daz. It was a strange comfort to see him being as honest as he was.

She wished she could. They went through dinner without much hassle. The ice cream was stowed away for the next day. Len's pana cotta was too good to let it go to waste. After wards, they planted themselves in form of the television like any normal family did. There was a little bickering over variety shows and television dramas (they settled on a documentary about penguins). There were a lot of friendly jibes and jokes. Miku almost forgot herself. She caught herself just in time to stop from using Osaka slang. Meiko, who had gone through lengths to drop her Hokkaido accent, gave her a soft smile.

As always the conversation turned to work. Mostly how Kaito would never get a good rap no matter how many writers were hired. They had to face it. Ice-cream lovers didn't get raps. Banana lovers did. Len had a few snide remarks to that. Rin just broke into a higher pitched version of Spice. He was luckier. There was a song that was different than his shota self. Miku remembered that video.

She hadn't been proud of it.

Rin didn't have many songs that fit her peppy but deep self. She had a loony Luna Lovegood air to her. Well meaning and a little odd about it. "Dolls" was a close fit.

Luka's "Brand New Day" hadn't topped the charts like "Just Be Friends". But, she was so happy. She had her happy soulful song. They even let her write the lyrics in collab with a song writer.

Meiko even had "Kokoro, Okizari"

Kaito grinned. "Miku-chan, they want you to do a new song."

"What is that?"

"Some punk rock called "Love is War". I don't think you'll like it very much." Kaito was a bit dense. Like the public, he believed her metal-loving, street smart side had died, or never been born.

Miku took a deep breath.

"I think I'll like it that very much."

He gave her a blank look. She switched the subject.

"What were you recording today?"

His eyes flashed with something different than blankness.

"'I Wish You Were Dead'."

* * *

WALL IS UP.


End file.
